RETHINKING NATO AND EU ENLARGEMENT

The challenge of securing Europe's eastern border from the Baltics to the Black Sea has been replaced by the need to extend peace and stability along the southern rim of the Euro-Atlantic community - from the Balkans across the Black Sea and further into Eurasia. The link between NATO membership and EU membership should be relaxed, if not dropped. The Atlantic alliance was reinvented in the 1990s but it sorely needs a second renaissance today. A new strategy of democratic enlargement can and must be part of this revival.